How Asake is Crippling the Nigerian Music Industry

Asake. Image Credt: https://radrafrica.com

You may have noticed that the Nigerian music industry has been slowing down for some time –we are having enough of the old artists, yet there are no new arrivals from behind the horizon. Somehow, the industry has been all about Asake in the last year. It isn’t that no one has been active at all, just that the attention has drifted to Asake such that the other artists have been forgotten. Davido, in an attempt to save his career, chose to collaborate with Asake. His reason for wanting the collaboration was because “Asake has scattered every place,” to use his exact words. Davido said he was waiting for Olamide’s consent –Asake won’t collaborate with you without Olamide’s approval.

Asake wasn’t the cynosure until the release of his single, Lonely at the Top. That single launched him to the top, making him the most sought-after Nigerian artist globally. But then he released his Lungu Boy album. Before its release, Asake talked about how the album would be in Yoruba and that he is more comfortable singing in Yoruba. I cowered when I heard him say this –I believe his success, following the release of Lonely at the Top, had to do with the language switch –he chose to perform that song in English against his tradition of singing in Yoruba.

When Lungu Boy finally got released, there was a rush for it and it trended, especially on YouTube and TikTok, albeit for an unusually short period. When an album is a hit, it continues to trend for months, but Lungu Boy trended for a couple of weeks only. Thus, all the plays were for the sake of reviews, people playing to rate it. Now, the abrupt silence is their opinion about the album –it is as if no new album has been released.

Most of what I have heard from Lungu Boy is Amapianowish. Plus, he added other elements that made the music so complex, leaving other artists wondering how he did it. He moved so swiftly that other artists couldn’t keep up. Following his success with Lonely at the Top, he became the avant-garde. With this, every music executive became fearful of putting money on any artist to avoid a financial loss.  

With the exception, of Ayra Star, who played around with Comma, Asake chose to single-handedly carry the Nigerian music industry on his shoulders in the last year. Now that he has tripped, the whole industry comes to a standstill.

When an African-American man was asked why the Nigerians are the most successful artists from Africa, he echoed my opinion: the Nigerians sing in English. The question is: what is responsible for the failure of the new album, Lungu Boy? For me, just the word “lungu” turned me off. I don’t know if it is a Yoruba word or a word from another tongue or Asake’s jargon. In Hausa though, the word, “lungu” means an alley or a hidden corner, a place where bad things happen without people noticing. You can, for instance, trap a woman and rape her successfully in a lungu. Furthermore, the whole album turned out to be in Yoruba, as Asake had promised. It is vital to note that while Asake sang in Yoruba, he failed to find that universal appeal until the release of Lonely at the Top, which is in English.

The decision to sing in Yoruba messed up Lungu Boy. People argue that music is a universal language. Yes, but not absolutely. English in our contemporary world is considered a superior language –everyone, including narcissists, wants to speak it. If the music is in a tongue that others consider inferior, it explains why its reception has been frosty. The success of any artist globally comes only if he is supported by the Western world, the storeroom of the English language. It isn’t by design but what Asake has done is to get the Nigerian music industry befuddled.